DEADLOCK! BSU students to remain at home as ASUU demands additional two months salary payment

Written By Idoma Television on Monday, July 20, 2015 | 2:34:00 AM

The strike action of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU
in Benue State University, BSU may be far from over as fresh revelations
and issues have emerged.
The union which have been on strike since early March this year are
making fresh demands of payment of an additional two months salaries and
clarification on the issue of earned allowances.
Recall that last Tuesday, the state governor, Dr Samuel Ortom when he
received final year medical students of the institution, disclosed that
the government had met ASUU’s most basic demands of payment of May and
June salaries but all that seems to have been over taken by events,
according to the union’s chairman, Dr David Ikoni who spoke to
BENUE.COM.NG.
When asked about rumours of the strike being called off, he said it was on and if it was called off, he’ll be the first to know.

“(The strike has been called off) By who? You are hearing from me
now, I’m the chairman of ASUU BSU. if they call it off, I will know. As
far as I’m concerned, they’ve not called the strike off.”
When asked about the government’s claim of meeting their basic
requirements to call off the strike, the chairman said things had
changed since those demands were made. That they now demanded payment of
an additional two months salaries (March and April), since the state
had received a bailout from the federal government for that purpose.

“You see, we are dealing with politicians, if he says he has met the
basic demands of the union, the time they asked him for the basic
demands has been overtaken by events.”
“At that time (the federal) government had not given them bailout
money to pay salary arrears. Now government have given them money to pay
salary arrears. So we are waiting for him to pay our March and April
salaries with that bailout money.”

Dr Ikoni refuted rumours that he was not reachable and was refusing
to pick the Governor’s calls, saying he was always available, day and
night.
“That information is false, my line is open. How did you get across
to me that the whole chief executive cannot get across to me?”

On the issues of earned allowances which hitherto was not imminent as
a cause of the ASUU strike, He said they now needed clarification as to
why their colleagues in some part of the university were being paid and
others weren’t.